Previously on Dragon Ball Super, Frieza and his forces had arrived on Earth with the intent of destroying Goku, who is currently away training with Vegeta and Whis on Beerus’ home world. Regardless if Goku is there or not, Frieza is still intent on destruction and the battle starts anyway with our heroes holding their own. However, the previous episode ends with Frieza’s number 1 warrior, Tagoma, stepping up to the plate to to show our heroes what’s what.

So, the battle has begun and our heroes seem hopelessly outmatched, oh how will they ever survive…?

Resurrection ‘F’ saga – Episode 8/13

We are teased off the bat with the name of “Ginyu” in the episode title. Now anyone who has been a long time watcher of Dragon Ball Z may recall Captain Ginyu from long long ago during the Frieza Saga. He was the head of Frieza’s elite fighting force and known for being able to transfer his essence into the body of someone else. Eventually he was defeated when Goku threw a frog in his way during a transformation. Then he ended up back on Earth and we occasionally got glimpses of him throughout Dragon Ball Z, but it appears he is about to take center stage yet again.

We start the episode with Piccolo going up against Tagoma and not producing much of an effect. Actually he doesn’t even make a dent and Tagoma ends up ripping his arm right off.

Tagoma is then blasted back by Gohan, but he is unphased by it. That is, until Gotenks shows up. Gotenks is the fused form of Goten and Trunks and is actually very powerful but lacks any training and is therefore often useless against seasoned warriors.

Despite the confidence of Gotenks, their fusion wears off right after their attack of Tagoma. As Tagoma is lying on the ground recovering from the hit, Ginyu frog comes over and gets Tagoma to say “Change Now”, which gets him to switch bodies.

And after all that hype for Tagoma, we have the return of Captain Ginyu of the Ginyu Force. His transformation is accompanied by a rather lengthy backstory of everything that has occurred to Captain Ginyu during Dragon Ball Z which is useful for new people to the series. But again, the animation for the flashback clips is often jarring in how bad they are.

And so Ginyu/Togoma enters the fray and quickly takes down the competition.

To try and save the planet, Bulma continues to try and contact Whis with her strawberry dessert. But on Beeru’s home planet, Goku and Vegeta are trapped within Whis’ staff. And Whis isn’t getting the message.

Gohan, meanwhile gets pummeled due to his lack of training. Although, once transformed into his Super Saiyan form, Gohan pretty much wipes the floor with Ginyu. Seeing Gohan’s dismissal of Ginyu, reminds Frieza of when Goku did that to him. This pushes Frieza to his limit and he proceeds to blast Gohan full of vengeance holes. As Frieza delivers the killing blow, Piccolo jumps in front of the blast saving his former protege.

And we end the episode with Piccolo dying or dead on the battlefield and no one left able to stand up to the might of Ginyu and Frieza.

Resurrection ‘F’ Movie Link

Resurrection ‘F’ to Super Time Correlation: From the ~51 minutes to ~51 minutes

Since Tagoma was killed off pretty early in the Resurrection ‘F’ movie, this part of the cartoon series was completely made up for the series itself. No Ginyu, no Tagoma. Nope. None of it. Goku and Vegeta never go into Whis’ staff. So we pretty much can skip over this part of the series for lining up to the movie.

Episode Thoughts and Feelings

This episode is alright I guess. None of the fights are overly interesting since all of them get halted before they really get going. Piccolo vs Tagoma is stopped. Tagoma vs Gotenks is stopped. Gohan vs Tagoma never really gets going. Gohan vs Ginyu is stopped. It’s an episode with more lack of fighting than actual fighting. And since this whole episode wasn’t even in the movie, you get a real impression of “filler” episode. If I didn’t love Ginyu so much I would probably downgrade this episode even more severely, but even then he got pulled out of the battle before anything really happened.

I would have liked to see someone actually fight here, but the problem is that we have Frieza, who is so utterly powerful that no one comes close. Then you have Tagoma/Ginyu. I would have liked to see Tagoma really unleash first before trading bodies with Ginyu, then have Ginyu pull some new things out of his body we never saw before. But then we have the rest of Frieza’s henchmen who really aren’t even worth considering. And on the good guys’ side you have everyone who is stronger than the mass bunch of bad guys, and Gohan who is stronger than Ginyu, then no one around who even comes close to Frieza. It makes for a boring series of stalling while we wait for Goku and/or Vegeta to show up.

And so we wait. Hopefully someone of interest shows up to do something next episode.